


how to be a lion when you were born a wolf

by ladyrose (orphan_account)



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arthur lives and TB has a $900 bounty, Gen, History
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 14:09:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17510060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/ladyrose
Summary: Everything is not what it seems.Arthur lives.





	how to be a lion when you were born a wolf

**Author's Note:**

> I saw in Arthur’s journal where he compared someone to a Roman emperor and I know Dutch was responsible for all his academic pursuits so I figured maybe Dutch likes ancient history and the rest is history (no pun intended)
> 
> This is un-beta’d which is probably painfully obvious.
> 
> If you’d like to send me prompts or ideas for a fic, or talk about the game and characters, my tumblr handle is ‘morgan-arthur’

They say that when you’re dying, your life flashes before your eyes. But that’s not what happens.

No, as he’s laying there watching peach tinted clouds slide across his line of vision, the glow of sunrise pushing away at the cold of night, Arthur thinks of lions.

Dutch had a book once when he and John were yet young. ‘ _On The Culture, Politics, and Religion of Ancient Rome: Vol. II, by Mssr. Louis Reychelles_.’ And Arthur remembers it mostly because it was the book Dutch had taught both he and John to read from.

The latter, in his first year with them, dropping uninvited on Arthur’s side of the tent, wearing the smell of summer rain and dusty roads like a second skin to lament about some particular story he’s read by “ _that_ M _mm-Sir Louis Rachel man_.”

About a man who was stabbed in the back by his friends. Despite all the warning signs. How his dying words were that of a plea and a question to the ones he thought he could trust most.

 _Sounds like he needs better friends_ , Arthur had chuckled.

But one story stuck out.

Partially because the first time he hears it, it was a good time.

One of those times where you don’t know cold or hunger or a pang of homesickness when you were still within your home. Maybe that’s why he remembers it now.

Now that he’s... _well_...

He’s twenty two again. A lucrative lead affording them a weekends respite in eastern Nebraska, pockets full and spirits the highest they had been.

It had been a warm day. Sunlight dappling through the branches of a tall oak where Dutch and Arthur had settled to take their lunch away from a resting Susan and Hosea. John joining them a moment later to lay on the grass where the sun shone unrestricted looking for all the world like some wild haired, sunbathing cat.

They sat in comfortable silence like that until Dutch leaned back against the chair he had dragged over, hands crossing over his book—that history one—to hold it in place and asked to the air above them:

“Do you boys know what gladiators are?”

Arthur catches John’s glass green eyes squinting up at him through the sun for a heartbeat. A second of shared sentiment before they shut again and he’s back to bouncing one leg from where it’s slung over the knee of the other.

“No, Dutch.”

“John?”

“No, Dutch.”

“Well,” the book carefully set aside. “They were a class of fighters. They lived during Ancient Rome and fought in arenas for entertainment. Sometimes each other. Sometimes wild animals, like lions and tigers.”

“That seems an unfair fight,” Arthur mused and Dutch chuckled, shrugging.

“It was. But not for who you’d expect.”

And he’s watching the sky again. The leaves rustling in the wind and the sky a cloudless blue because this memory is in vivid color. And he looks at them. At John in the sun and Arthur dragging his knife across a whetstone and tells them.

He tells them that to ensure the animals would fight, they were kept away from food for a few days before the event.

That they weren’t fighting for honor or fame. For recognition amongst their peers and countrymen. For banal material reasons. His words. They were fighting because they were hungry.

_Just because they were hungry._

“So, tell me boys,” he says. “Would you rather cheer for the one that’s fighting for status and social elevation, or the one who’s hungry?”

John had got that furrowed sort of thoughtful look on his face. Arthur’s own attention trained on Dutch’s face as he languidly tugged his pocket watch free from its confines and peered down at the brass face.

“Yes, Arthur,” he announces in the sort of way that says that a lesson was over. “It _is_ an unfair fight.”

And Arthur wonders.

Mostly about how so thrown a fight could be enjoyed and idealized at all. But maybe it was the stage itself, the game and its rules that were at fault and not the actors playing their parts. He thinks, perhaps, that’s it.

That story was the start all end all to everything they were and everything they did. They weren’t outlaws. They were lions. They weren’t thieves. They were hungry. And Dutch would have never lied. Arthur and John and any of them had no reason not to believe it wasn’t true. Because it was. True, that is. At the time.

Now? Not so much.

But none of that matters now that he’s dying. He’s fought his fight and a part of him was glad for it. He wouldn’t know what to do with himself had he lived.

He hadn’t planned that far ahead. He wasn’t that kind of hungry.

Those were pursuits for a young man and he wasn’t that young.

So he closes his eyes and waits.

And waits.

And waits.

And next thing he knows he’s _hungry_.

It was gradual. The ache in his back and chest dimming to the ache in his stomach, and he blinks against the sun—now above him—and thinks that maybe he’s in hell after all.

The only thing that disputes this is the hand tugging at the front of his shirt in an attempt to sit him up. A hand he’d recognize anywhere, a distinct smell of something smoky and flowery he’d be able to place blind.

“Charles?”

His voice doesn’t sound like his own and he’s frowning. _Charles_ is frowning. Not angrily but in focus. Arthur’s arm is draped none too gently across the other man’s shoulder, one last heave lurching him forward and for a split second he’s afraid Charles is going to launch him flat on his face. And he laughs—a breathless gasp that leaves his lungs pinching painfully at the thought that he’d meet death halfway without a fuss but a broken nose just wouldn’t do.

“Stop talking. You’re a fool, Arthur Morgan,” Charles grunts, leading him to where Taima waits dutifully by a tree. “Watch your step here.”

“I—“

“Stop talking,” Charles orders.

Arthur’s mouth clamps shut.

He isn’t sure what happens between Here and There. There’s voices, rising and falling at one point. Charles voice. A strangers voice. Another strangers voice.

And then they’re moving again.

He’s leaning flush against Charles’ back, wrists bound around his friends waist to hold him less he slip and he does slip. Into a deep sleep. And when he sleeps he dreams. It’s been awhile since he dreamt.

He dreams about the past.

There was a nobility to the lions in Dutch’s story. And that just wasn’t him was it? There was nothing noble about who he was and what he did. In those two crosses sat anonymously among overgrown grass. In Downes and his widow...

He awakes with a violent flinch, rolls over, blinking through sleep crusted eyes and focuses on the figure seated directly at the bedside. Fingers loosely cradling a book and a blanket wrapped around their shoulders.

“You’re just everywhere aren’t you?” He asks Charles. Voice breaking around the words and twisting them almost unintelligible. Charles looks at him sidelong, quirks and eyebrow and smirks.

“Still trying to run your mouth after all that?”

After all... _what_? What happened exactly?

John was there. Then he wasn’t. Dutch was there. Then he wasn’t. Was that the dream? No. That came later—

Charles reads the vague confusion on his face as clear as though it were written on the pages of the book in front of him.

“A misdiagnosis,” he explains. Arthur doesn’t have to ask about what. “Pneumonia. Advanced, so says the doctor here, but...treatable. You’ll be fine if you do as he says. I’ve paid a woman just down the hall here to check on you now and again.”

“With what—“ A cough that feels like it’s splitting him in half has him propping himself up, shuddering against the painful intakes of air that follow and waving away Charles when he abandons the book in favor of resting a firm hand on his back.

“ _With what_ money, Charles? Where are we?”

“Far away from all that.” Again, Arthur doesn’t ask for an explanation. “A boarding house now, uh,” he looks sheepishly across the room and shrugs. “I had to drag the doctor here. I didn’t think you’d make it down to see him.”

“With what money?” It’s meant to come out firm but sounds little more than a hoarse whisper.

“There’s more pressing matters at hand,” Charles says. Arthur relents. “John’ll be glad to see you’ve made it.”

“I don’t want to see John.”

Charles blinks at him.

“What?”

“I...This is over. What we were before is...is over.”

“Arthur—“

“Maybe one day. Alright? Maybe one day. But right now he needs to go a-and...and I don’t know. Start something. Be something. Be good. He doesn’t need to see me like this.”

“You and he were like brothers. I don’t think he’d care,” Charles muses quietly and Arthur can’t look at him anymore.

He’s watching the ceiling and the sheer curtains. He’s watching the light on the wall and the quilt tucked snugly at his feet. He swallows.

“We still are brothers.”

A beat of silence.

He’s hyper aware of Charles’ hand still on his back.

“He’ll be alright,” A nod. More to himself than to Charles. “He’s a lion, that one.”

They sit in silence awhile. Voices from outside the hall wafting under the door. Noises from the street below a dull thrum just outside the window. Arthur feels sleep tugging at him again when Charles stands, paces to the foot of the bed, hesitates and sighs.

“What do I tell him? You know he’ll ask.”

“Tell him you buried me.”

“And when you up and decide to come back from the grave?”

“I’ll deal with it when I deal with it.”

“Sure,” Another sigh. This one more defeated than the last. “Alright.”

They talk like that for awhile. Charles leaning against the foot of the bed and Arthur buried to his neck under blankets. And they discuss what happens now, or rather, what’ll happen next. Where each will go. Who each will become. All until a church somewhere, maybe a block away rings it’s bell for ten o’ clock service and Charles announces he’d best be on his way. Not before pointedly stuffing a bundle of money between the mattress and bed frame, glancing up to hold Arthur’s gaze long enough to get his point across.

“Listen to that doctor, alright? And take it easy, just until your strength is back.”

“Whatever you say.”

“I mean it, Arthur,” a pause. “I’d expect you to be here for some time. Would you accept one visitor at least?”

Arthur can’t help the smile that hurts as much as it’s genuine.

“Always.”

Charles returns the smile, throws him a half salute and the door shuts between them. The area he took up now empty and the room thrown in a peaceful and relative quiet.

Arthur turns his back to the sun and for the first time in what feels like his entire life, he rests at ease.


End file.
